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There can be little doubt that Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov sees himself -- and craves recognition -- not just as a secular political leader, but as the head of a national-religious community.

In that latter capacity, Kadyrov has sought in recent years to systematically impose, by force if necessary, his own eclectic vision of what constitutes "traditional Chechen Islam," along with the code of behavior, ethics, and dress he considers one of its key components.

But although some eminent Arab leaders treat him with respect, Kadyrov's relentless promulgation of a bizarre syncretic amalgam of Chechen Sufism and popular Islam; canonical Sunni Islam, as represented by the Shafii legal school; and, more recently, Christian practice has alienated many clerics and ordinary believers in Chechnya. Few dare risk incurring his wrath by openly expressing dissent, however.

A classic example of Kadyrov's idiosyncratic approach is the way he has sought to exploit his acquisition last summer of a chalice allegedly owned by the Prophet Muhammad and two rugs that temporarily covered his grave.

One of the two rugs has been placed on the grave in the village of Khosi-Yurt of Kadyrov's father, former Chechen mufti Akhmed-hadji Kadyrov, which has become a site of pilgrimage. Cisterns containing "holy water" from the chalice, liberally diluted with tap water, have been delivered throughout Chechnya in light of its imputed miraculous healing and reconciliatory properties, even though the Christian concept of "holy water" is totally alien to Islam.

While individual Chechens are reportedly convinced of the miraculous qualities of the chalice, theologians remain divided over whether Shari'a law permits the veneration of material objects considered sacred.

It is both odd and incongruous that Kadyrov, the son of a respected mufti who studied in the 1980s first at a madrasah in Bukhara and then at the Islamic University in Tashkent, should have grown up with such a rudimentary and flawed understanding of both Islamic dogma and ritual. In contrast to 20-year-old insurgent commanders who quote the Koran in flawless Arabic, he has never been known to quote verbatim from the Koran in public.

Workers decorate a New Year's tree on Grozny's Vladimir Putin Prospekt in December 2010.

Such pronouncements play into the hands of the North Caucasus insurgency, whose members profess a puritanical Salafi Islam that is increasingly proving more attractive to young Chechens than Kadyrov's bastardized Sufism. Salafis reject such elements of Sufism as the worship of Sufi saints and pilgrimages to holy places ("ziyart").

The insurgency's ideologues routinely denounce Kadyrov and his henchmen, including the republic's official clergy, as "murtads" (apostates) and "mushriks" (idolators). Challenging Kadyrov's pronouncements is fraught with risk, however. An imam from Urus-Martan who publicly denounced last year as a pagan ritual the celebration of the Christian New Year, complete with the traditional Russian New Year's tree, was abducted by Kadyrov's security personnel and beaten to within an inch of his life.

Chechen Saint Kunta-Hadji

Central to Kadyrov's institutionalization and exploitation of Chechen Sufism for political ends is his elevation to cult status of the 19th-century Chechen Sufi preacher Kunta-hadji Kishiyev, one of the most venerated representatives of the pacifist Qadari tariqah (Grozny's Islamic University is named after him).

Kunta-hadji advocated the acceptance of infidel Russian domination in order to avert the extinction of the Chechen nation in an endless war against the Tsarist regime. To that end, he even advised believers to enter an Orthodox church if required to do, as "it is only an edifice."

Such dissimulation, whether or not consciously deriving from Kunta-hadji's teachings, was widespread among Chechens in the 1970s and 1980s. In his stellar "Chechnya. Tombstone of Russian Power," the British scholar Anatol Lieven quotes Chechen friends who explained to him that it was not considered a sin to deny one's membership of a Sufi "vird" (brotherhood), or even to consume pork while serving in the Soviet military.

Kunta-hadji was deported in January 1864 to central Russia, where he died in prison three years later. His followers have never been able to come to terms with the collective trauma of losing their spiritual leader. To this day they await the return of their sheikh; he is rumored to have been sighted in Mecca in 1971.

The importance imputed to Kunta-hadji by Kadyrov and the Chechen official clergy serves two interrelated political purposes. First, it substantiates Kadyrov's implicit claim to religious leadership by showcasing the Kadyrov family's association with the saint: Akhmed-hadji's great-grandfather Iles was reportedly arrested together with Kunta-hadji.

Second, the superficial resemblance between Kunta-hadji's creed of nonviolent resistance and dissimulation in the name of preserving the Chechen nation and the professed subservience to and financial exploitation of Moscow espoused by first Akhmed-hadji and then Ramzan Kadyrov serves to rationalize, even ennoble that latter strategy in the eyes of the Chechen population.

The anniversary of Kunta-hadji's deportation on January 3 was celebrated this year on a far more lavish scale then ever before. And increasingly, Kadyrov and his advisers attend public functions dressed in the traditional garments and skull cap favored by Kunta-hadji's followers.

Comments

by: Jack from: US

January 16, 2012 21:53

what irritates US government and RFE/RL is obviously not the fact that Kadyrov interprets islam "wrong way" (obviously Wahhabi friends of US government will always do it "right way"), but the fact that Russia seems to have prevailed over US-and-Saudi-sponsored terrorists in Chechnya

by: Ingush

January 17, 2012 19:42

The West countries including their Mongol slave Russia fail to realize that by promoting this lunatic and his heretic ideas they add fuels into the fire which will spill beyond the Caucasus in less than 25 years (I). The West also fails to realize that the North Caucasians are not fighting for freedom; they are fighting for slavery to God. I highly respect Kunta Khadzhi Kishiev but he was not a “Sufi” he was a Muslim. In Islam there are only two streams either you are a Muslims or you are not. He was a Muslim. He’s never said to "accept of infidel Russian". Using simple logic: majority of Chechens who were “Kunta-Khadzhis Sufis” would never rebel against Mongol Russian minions. Unfortunately for the fairytale teller they did. But how about the "accept of infidel Russian"? Pretty simple, these words were put into the folk stories about Kunta-Khadzhi by Russian NKVD-KGB to pacify the Caucasian resistance. The same fairytales which were put by the British “MIntel” into the Ingush folk stories about Britain coming to the North Caucasians rescue. You know "just relax and do nothing against our henchman Mongol friend Russia, which can freely poison any dissident they want on our soil, because you will be rescued by English Queen herself in quadrillion years, you bloodthirsty mAZlem pedophile terrorists".

by: M

January 18, 2012 14:18

ingush: "In Islam there are only two streams either you are a Muslims or you are not."

------------

wrong ! The Quran has verses about Christians and Jews as it clearly state that Islam as true faith according to the Quran forbids to Muslims to deviate, but says that some Christians and Jews despite their mistake (mistakes according to Quran) should not greave as The Quran : "2:62 Those who believe , and those who follow the Jewish scriptures, and the Christians and the Sabians,- any who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve. "- etc.etc....There are a lot of critisism towards Christians as those Christians of 7 century indeed wrongly understood Trinity (they thought it was 3 Gods) etc.etc - a lot - and even today;s Christians would Critisise those Christians whom the Quran critiseses - but unfortunatelly many m,uslims ( and even their teachers) started to put in the mouth of God their own words - like they comment or add in brakets their own words that thre Prophet and the God NEVER said - like when the Prophet came to one village and said that nobody from THAT UMMA will enter the Paradise if not become muslim - they take thos "from this umma" from the text sop that to prove that good Christians will not enter Paradise - or they say that 2;62 and 5:69 of the Quran is about Christians who lived before the Prophet - and this contradict even to the grammar of tenses in arabic of the verses as it is exactly about ALL Christians regardless of time where and when they live or will live - as a result they suibstitutte the words of the Allah by their own decigions and so start to say that abrogation abriogates this or that forgeting that abrogation abrogates some parts for period of war, while then again war parts in perios of piece etc...EVERY word of the Quran is valid for a muslim albeit in diferent circumstances - there is no ETERNAL abrogation of the words of the God - if Allah wanted to dump Christians 100% he would say it clearly, but he for HIS OWN reason decided NOT to doom Christians despite they understand some things differently then it is in the Quran - and THIS IS A PART OF THE QURAN to consider Christians and even some Jews as inheritors of Paradise along with muslims- those who deny that are denying the word of the Allah that is in the Quran - so, ingush, don't simplify everything for your p[olitical reasons if you are REAL muslim.

by: Ingush

January 20, 2012 01:42

More proof that Mongol Russia is Brittain's b---- and that they work together against Caucasians trying to pacify them. "Putin offered unhesitating support for the US. He overruled his own national security team and declined to voice any protest when US bases appeared in former Soviet Republics in Central Asia. A quixotic offer from the Taliban of a united front against America was rejected with a “universal English term: f--- off!” recalled Sergei Ivanov, then Putin’s defence minister. Ivanov"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9025376/Putin-Russia-and-the-West-BBC-Two-review.html

About This Blog

This blog presents analyst Liz Fuller's personal take on events in the region, following on from her work in the "RFE/RL Caucasus Report."It also aims, to borrow a metaphor from Tom de Waal, to act as a smoke detector, focusing attention on potential conflict situations and crises throughout the region. The views are the author's own and do not represent those of RFE/RL.